Toymaker Mattel has partnered with a San Francisco startup called ToyTalk to develop “Hello Barbie” – an internet-connected version of the popular doll that’ll strike up a real conversation with your little tykes.

Spy Barbie currently uses a bank of pre-programmed responses to common questions and speech recognition software to detect which one to use.

However, it starts to get a bit creepy the more your nipper chats with the toy.

It will actually record each child’s response and store it in a database in the cloud to allow the team at ToyTalk to develop more complex conversations.

“Whatever we come away with as our first blush attempt at the conversations, we’ll see what kids want to talk about or not,” said Oren Jacob, CEO of ToyTalk and former CTO of Pixar.